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1. A Firm Call on the Cycle Low
Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of crypto asset manager Bitwise, said on Monday, November 9, that the bitcoin bottom for this cycle was set in June and that a multi-year bull market is now in its early stages. He expects a few weeks of uncertainty before a good end to 2026. One day later, Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $74,000.
The remarks came during a podcast interview recorded live, and they amount to the clearest statement Hougan has made on the question since prices began recovering from their mid-year lows. "I think we bottomed in June," he said, describing the market as being "in the early stages of a multi-year bull market."
The timing gave the forecast an immediate test. Within roughly a day of the recording, a hotter-than-expected inflation reading pushed the largest cryptocurrency lower, leaving it about 42% beneath its record high. Hougan had, in effect, anticipated that kind of turbulence: his optimism about the coming years was paired with open caution about the coming weeks.
2. Has Bitcoin Bottomed? The Case Hougan Makes
Hougan's answer is yes: in his view the low for this cycle was reached in June, and the market has been in a new bull phase since. His evidence is less about any single chart level than about how digital assets have behaved when confronted with developments that would normally be expected to hurt them.
He pointed to three in particular. The first was the Democratic sweep of Congress, which has raised questions about how lawmakers will treat the industry. The second was a run of high inflation readings. The third was the growing expectation that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates. Higher rates generally weigh on assets that pay no yield and that investors treat as higher risk, so a market that absorbs rising rate expectations without breaking down is, in his reading, showing underlying strength.
Hougan summarized the argument in a single line: "one definition of an early bull market is when bad news stops mattering." The idea is a familiar one among investors. Late in a downturn, sellers who were going to sell have largely done so, and the remaining holders are less sensitive to negative headlines. Prices stop falling on news that would earlier have triggered sharp declines, and that resilience is often visible before a sustained rally begins.
He is not alone in dating the low to mid-year. Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy, argued in late October that bitcoin had bottomed in late June. Two prominent research voices at two large digital asset firms have therefore landed on roughly the same conclusion, though each is offering a judgment about a market that has not yet proved the point by returning to its former highs.
3. How His View Hardened Over Five Months
Certainty of this kind was absent from Hougan's public comments earlier in the year. In June, the month he now identifies as the turning point, he said he had "less certainty around how, when or if it has bottomed." That hesitation is typical of the moment itself: a low is rarely recognizable while it is forming, and it can usually be confirmed only after prices have moved away from it for some time.
By July 1 his language had shifted modestly. In a memo published that day, he wrote that the market was "nearing the bottom," a phrase that still left room for further declines. The statement he made on November 9 drops that qualification altogether and places the low firmly in the past.
Bitwise's own published figures give a sense of how deep the decline was. In a memo dated October 28, the firm said bitcoin had fallen more than 50% from its peak before bottoming below $59,000 in June. That peak was an all-time high of $126,080, reached on October 6, 2025. A drawdown of more than half is severe by the standards of most asset classes, although bitcoin has repeatedly experienced declines of that scale in earlier cycles before recovering.
4. Why He Is Cautious About the Next Few Weeks
Optimism about the multi-year picture did not extend to the immediate outlook. Hougan described himself as "a little bit pessimistic for the next few weeks," and he was specific about the reason: uncertainty over how Democrats will approach crypto now that they control Congress.
Policy direction matters to digital asset markets because so much of the industry's structure in the United States depends on decisions made in Washington. Which agencies supervise which tokens, how exchanges and stablecoin issuers are regulated, and what products asset managers may offer are all shaped by legislation and by the oversight priorities of congressional committees. A change in which party sets those priorities introduces a period in which investors cannot be sure what the rules will look like, and markets tend to price that doubt as risk.
Hougan framed the problem as temporary. His outlook, in his words, was "maybe a few weeks of uncertainty, and then I think a good end of the year." The implication is that he expects clarity about the new Congress's intentions to arrive fairly quickly, and that he does not see the political shift as a threat to the broader recovery he describes.
5. An Inflation Report Tests the Thesis Within a Day
Tuesday, November 10, delivered exactly the sort of bad news Hougan had been discussing. The October consumer price index came in a tenth of a percentage point above forecasts, and bitcoin slipped below $74,000 in response. Market data showed the asset trading near $73,300 at 18:08 UTC.
At that level bitcoin stood about 42% below its $126,080 record from October 2025. It also remained well above the sub-$59,000 low that Bitwise identified in June, which is the comparison that matters most for Hougan's argument. A bottom call is not a claim that prices will rise in a straight line; it is a claim that the earlier low will hold. On that narrow test, Tuesday's decline did not contradict him.
The consumer price index is one of the most closely watched economic releases because it feeds directly into expectations for Federal Reserve policy. A reading above forecasts strengthens the case for tighter policy, which in turn tends to pressure assets such as bitcoin. A miss of a tenth of a percentage point is small in absolute terms, yet it was enough to move the market on a day when rate-hike expectations were already elevated.
Whether the episode supports or undermines the notion that bad news has stopped mattering depends on what happens next. A market that falls on a hot inflation print and then stabilizes above its prior low would fit Hougan's description of an early bull phase. A market that keeps sliding toward the June level would not.
6. The One AI Scenario He Says Would Hurt Bitcoin
Hougan was also asked how the bursting of a bubble in artificial intelligence could affect digital assets. The question reflects a common concern among investors: that heavy spending on AI has inflated valuations across technology and that a reversal could drag down other risk assets with it.
His response was that bitcoin comes out ahead in most versions of that story. The only AI scenario in which bitcoin does not win, he said, is "a sharp recession and no government response to it." In that case, he acknowledged, prices could fall below the June lows, which would invalidate his bottom call. He added that he considers such an outcome unlikely.
The reasoning rests on what governments typically do when an economy contracts sharply. Policymakers usually respond with spending and looser monetary conditions, and those measures tend to benefit assets with a fixed or limited supply. Hougan's exception is the narrow case in which a downturn arrives and that support does not.
7. The $1.6 Million Forecast and the Store-of-Value Math
Beyond the near-term picture, Hougan restated one of the most ambitious price targets issued by a mainstream asset manager. Bitwise forecasts that bitcoin will reach $1.6 million by 2036, a projection published last month in the firm's annual long-term outlook. It is a forecast, not a fact, and it depends on a chain of assumptions that Hougan laid out.
The starting point is the market for stores of value, meaning assets that people hold primarily to preserve purchasing power over long periods. Hougan described that market, which he defines as bitcoin and gold together, as being worth roughly $30 trillion and growing at about 13% a year. On that path, he said, it could reach about $90 trillion in a decade. The second assumption is that bitcoin's share of the total rises from about 5% today to 25%.
Bitwise's written report uses slightly different figures. It begins from a $31 trillion store-of-value market and puts that market at $110 trillion in 10 years, and it lists a compound annual growth rate of 34.3%.
Hougan contrasted those expectations with a more conservative estimate from a major traditional asset manager. JPMorgan Asset Management set a 10% base case for bitcoin's annual return in October. Bitwise's expected annual return is well above that, he said: "We're closer to 30." The gap illustrates how widely professional estimates of the asset's long-run potential still differ, even among firms that now treat it as a legitimate part of a portfolio.
8. What Comes Next: The Debasement Trade in 2027
Looking past the end of this year, Hougan expects a theme that has driven demand for scarce assets to return. He said the so-called debasement trade will "be back in sort of full force" in 2027.
The debasement trade is the bet that mounting government debt will erode the value of fiat currencies and lift assets whose supply cannot be expanded at will. Gold is the traditional vehicle for that view, and bitcoin, with its capped supply, has increasingly been treated as a second one. If investors come to believe that governments will manage their debts by allowing currencies to lose purchasing power, the argument goes, they will move more capital into such assets.
For the moment, the sequence Hougan has laid out is straightforward to track. The first stage is the few weeks of uncertainty he anticipates as markets wait to see how the Democratic-controlled Congress approaches crypto. The second is the year-end period, which he expects to be good. The third is 2027, when he sees the debasement theme regaining strength. Each stage offers a point at which his view can be measured against what prices actually do, beginning with whether bitcoin holds above the June low after this week's inflation-driven decline.